Monday, May 2, 2011
Grand Ballroom C-D, 2nd fl (Sheraton Seattle)
It is very important to know the chemical composition of biomass feedstocks in order to decide the lignocellulosic material and the associated pretreatment for production of cellulosic ethanol. In this context, the present work applied an analytical methodology of chemical characterization, developed for sugarcane bagasse, to other biomasses, namely, sugarcane straw, bamboo, bean stalk, sape grass, wheat straw, african palm rachis, elephant grass and agave. Chemical composition (cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin) of the raw materials was determined according to Gouveia et al. [1]. Carbohydrates and organic acids were determined by HPLC in a Shimadzu LC-10AD chromatograph equipped with a Shimadzu RID-6A refractive index detector and a Aminex HPX-87H (300 9 7.8 mm, Bio- Rad Laboratories Ltd) column. The samples were diluted with deionized water, filtered through Sep-Pak C18 filters (Millipore) and then injected in the chromatograph under these conditions: 45 °C column temperature, 0.005 mol.L-1 sulfuric acid as mobile phase at 0.6 mL.min-1 flow rate. The results showed that, among the materials studied, the sugarcane bagasse had the higher amount of cellulose (43.8%) and the sugarcane straw had the higher amount of hemicellulose (32.4%), justifying the interest in these biomasses as raw materials for the production of cellulosic ethanol.
Reference:
[1] Gouveia ER, Nascimento RT, Souto-Maior AM, Rocha GJM (2009) Validação de metodologia para a caracterização química de bagaço de cana-de-açúcar. Quim Nova 32:1500–1503.
Akcnowledgments due to Fapesp, CAPES and CNPq.